Details:

Creators:
Jaller, Miguel ; Pahwa, Anmol
Jaller, Miguel ; Pahwa, Anmol Less -
Corporate Creators:
University of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies
Corporate Contributors:
University of California Institute of Transportation Studies
Subject/TRT Terms:
[+]
COVID-19 Demand Disaster Resilience Electronic Commerce Empirical Methods Last Mile Pickup And Delivery Service Third Party Logistics Providers
Publication/ Report Number:
UC-ITS-2021-06
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7922/G20G3HGR
Resource Type:
Tech Report
Geographical Coverage:
United States
Edition:
Final Research Report (July 2020 — March 2022)
Corporate Publisher:
University of California Institute of Transportation Studies
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant breakdown of the traditional retail sector, resulting in a substantial surge in ecommerce demand for the delivery of essential goods. The e-retailers coped with this surge in demand, albeit while operating at a much lower level of service than usual, by outsourcing part of their operations through: crowdsourced delivery fleets, alternative pickup/delivery locations, 3rd party logistics service providers, etc. Given e-retailers’ role in the supply of essential goods, the pandemic raised concerns pertaining to e-retailers’ ability to maintain and efficiently restore level of service in similar market disruptions. This study assesses the resilience of last-mile distribution operations under disruptions, by integrating a continuous approximation–based last-mile distribution model; the resilience triangle concept; and the Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity (R4) resilience framework. The resulting integrated tool, the R4 Resilience Triangle Framework, is a novel performance-based qualitative-cum-quantitative domain-agnostic framework (where “domain” means “discipline,” such as engineering, economics, etc.). Through a set of empirical analyses, this study highlights the opportunities and challenges of different distribution/outsourcing strategies to cope with disruption. For example, the study analyzed the use of an independent crowdsourced fleet (flexible service contingent on driver availability); the use of collection-point pickup (unconstrained downstream capacity contingent on customer willingness to self-collect); and integration with a logistics service provider (reliable service with high distribution costs). Overall, the e-retailers must create a suitable platform to ensure reliable crowdsourced deliveries, position sufficient collection-points to ensure customer willingness to self-collect, and negotiate contracts with several logistics service providers to ensure adequate backup distribution.
Format:
PDF
Funding:
UC-ITS-2021-06
Collection(s):
US Transportation Collection
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:6046e0b3851eeb75e0ddd86c24f41a4cf392d1d32b635202287167b9620ca8dd
Download URL:
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/65501/dot_65501_DS1.pdf
File Type:

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